The Yamaha did arrive before Kate, and I've been using it since September. Video performance was quite pleasing (it trounced my old interlaced player and my progressive scan DVD recorder, although it had some troubles with the Secrets benchmark tests), DVD-Audio was very comparable to my previous DVD-A player, SACD is on par with or perhaps a little weaker than DVD-A on the Yamaha (based on the small sampling of SACD's in my collection, several of which are stereo discs that may not be the cleanest recordings and mixes), and CD performance was a bit stronger than my previous player. It's hard to say how the SACD performance might compare to your DV-45 since my previous player didn't suppor SACD at all. My biggest gripe with the Yamaha is definitely the user interface - no discrete FF/rew buttons and a display that is too small to show title/chapter information and timer simultaneously.